Asana Expands AI Capabilities with $75 Million Stack AI Acquisition

Asana has acquired the workflow automation company Stack AI for $75 million, part of a larger effort to position itself as an AI-native workplace platform. Stack AI’s founders, Tony Rosinol and Bernard Aceituno, will join Asana as part of the acquisition.

Positioning the acquisition as a vital step in its AI expansion, Asana aims to evolve its platform into “the operating system for human-agent teams.”

The announcement was made Thursday afternoon, timed to coincide with Asana’s earnings report and investor call.

Stack AI, which is crafted as an AI workflow automation tool, focuses on creating agents that seamlessly integrate with established business ecosystems, utilizing data from platforms such as Salesforce, Slack, and Gsuite. As part of Y Combinator’s Winter ’23 accelerator, it has competed aggressively against automation solutions like Zapier, as well as AI organizations including OpenAI and Anthropic.

According to Pitchbook data, Stack AI had secured nearly $20 million in funding, primarily from a recent $16 million Series A round. This investment round included support from firms like Gradient, Epaklon Capital, Lobby VC, LifeX Ventures, and Vercel CEO Guillermo Rauch.

Asana is well known for its work management tools, but it has also rolled out several AI-focused features in recent years, such as the AI Studio agent builder and the AI Teammates, which offer pre-built automation options. While comparable solutions are available from larger labs, Asana believes its deep integration into current corporate workflows provides a unique advantage, tapping into context and training data that might otherwise be overlooked.

Despite facing challenges in the public market, particularly since the arrival of ChatGPT, with its market cap halved and the departure of founder Dustin Moskovitz as CEO last March, Asana has continued to report steady revenue growth. New leadership is optimistic that enhanced human-agent products will facilitate a recovery.

“This acquisition accelerates our roadmap and takes us into the next phase of human-agent work,” said CEO Dan Rogers in a statement. “We’re already seeing real momentum with AI Teammates and AI Studio… StackAI now allows them to go further, agentifying the most complex business processes end-to-end.”